Kids and teens are telling parents they’re depressed. Teachers are observing it in students. Husbands and wives are encouraging one another to get help. Doctors are booked out for weeks and months, and advertisers are promoting medicine for all sorts of mood disorders. And of course the topic is all over social media. These frequent reports of depression are often less about clinical causes and more about a natural result of living in a fallen world.  Depression is common, but optimal solutions are not always applied.

Author’s Note: This is a long article, but I wanted to give readers a robust resource because depression is so common. Please give it a skim and decide if you need to print it out and go through it with a loved one, or use it as an outline to discuss with your counselor, mentor, or accountability partner. Links for other articles, books, and a podcast are also included.

Depression Requires Self-Confrontation

• Confront Your Beliefs. Don’t have a victim mentality about depression. Take on a mindset that while sometimes depression is an appropriate part of grieving a loss, depression is destructive when it wears out its welcome.
• Confront Your Moods. Depression is a mood state you can learn to fight against for yourself and for those who love you and are exposed. Or, as you support others who battle with depression, consider it an opportunity to point them toward more victorious living.
• Confront Your Process. This article can help you begin a new process for responding to depression when you (or others) are struggling with it. These ideas can help you rewire your brain for less depression in your life and shape your mind for more purpose and joy.

Before & After Times of Depression

The purpose of this article (you can take your time and explore it from beginning to end) is a) to help you learn how to make and run a plan to help reduce the chances of having debilitating seasons of depression and b) to help you learn how to have better responses to depression once it arrives on the scene and tries to take you down. Pick and choose what will work well for you to make you stronger and healthier. Ask someone that you trust to check off on your plan and hold you accountable to it.

Develop Your Individual Plan for Depression

• Describe It. When you’re emotionally healthiest, consider spending time finding and even writing descriptions to help you articulate how your experience with depression is unique to you. Explaining your experiences will also increase understanding from your loved ones. Communicating these emotions will help you know which comforting verses and promises to look for in Scripture to match your needs. Save your list of references or written out verses to refer to when your mood is starting to decline. Even though you won’t be in the mood to read Scripture, plan to do it anyway. This is why accountability is so useful.
• Be a Teacher to your Team. Explain to your loved ones know how they can best support you when you struggle, and choose to trust them so that you’ll be willing to comply when it’s time for them to do their job of helping you. Determine to stay true to your word, so that even when you’re depressed you’ll allow your accountability partner or team to help as you previously requested.
• Look for Sin. Consider your actions during the last time you were depressed and ask the Lord to give you repentance where needed. Apologize to those who may have gotten caught in the crossfires of your struggle. Ask the Holy Spirit now to help you catch yourself next time you’re down to be less self-sabotaging and less hurtful to others than you were the time before. Decide how you can be easier to live with, or if you’re the caregiver, how you can champion someone else to be easier to live with.

Incorporate Biblical Strategy into Your Depression Plan

• Desire God’s Will. God commands you to have no other gods (including yourself) before Him. This is for your own good. When you’re consumed by your feelings, how you’re treated by others, and how alone you are, you become far more vulnerable to emotional instability and self-absorption. When you’re surrendered to His will, He can give you His steadfastness, perspective, and energy to live out your purpose for each day. Thus, it’s important to incorporate into your plan the ways you will look outside of yourself during depression and focus on His will and the well-being of others. (Rom. 12:2)
• Select Your Words. When you’re grateful for His abounding grace and speak much testimony of His goodness and faithfulness, it’s like putting a gag order on your accuser (Rev. 12:11). It’s harder to fall prey to depression when you’re worshiping God and on the offensive against your predator. Praising God for the beauty of His creation and His work in your life more than complaining and obsessing about what’s wrong is an important strategy for your on-going plan. Such thanksgiving can include speaking out loud, singing, and journaling.
• Get Rid of Unforgiveness. If you’re stuck over how you’ve been mistreated, then pursue healing and forgiveness when you’re well and distract yourself from bitter thoughts when you’re depressed. The more you think about the ones who have wronged you, the more you actually become like them! And unforgiveness makes it easier for Satan to weave his tricks into your life (2 Cor. 2:11). For an article I’ve written about protecting yourself from spiritual attacks that fuel depression, click here.

Once Depression Hits

Evaluate the Causes

• Physiological. Perhaps not as often as TV would have you believe, but various health conditions and some types of medication can cause or worsen depression. It never hurts to have a medical exam to rule out underlying issues.
• Loss. Ask yourself if you’re grieving a loss and give yourself some time to work through it. Click here for my article about the under-recognized presence of loss in daily life, and the benefits of working through healthy, ongoing grief.
• Anxiety. Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression (Prov. 12:25). Take action to lower anxiety and it’ll help your heart feel better. Click here for one of my articles on anxiety.
• Various Circumstances. It’s better to pray for solutions and responses to the hardships of life rather than dealing with matters on your own.
• Overwhelming Emotions. If you experience abundant emotion, the book of Psalms is your go-to for expressing your feelings with the Lord. He is the only One who can be consistently and perfectly there for you in your times of need. Practice leaning on Him through your feelings and allowing Him to revamp your emotions to match His.
• Random. Sometimes depression just feels like it comes out of nowhere. You may just be prone to that. In this case, don’t get distracted overthinking the cause. Use your energy for the rebound.

Submit to God, Resist the Devil, and your Enemy Will Flee from You

• Submit. Depression is an easy trick for Satan to use against you, but the more you practice prayers of submission to Jesus during bouts of depression, the weaker the enemy’s power becomes. An example of such a prayer is: “Jesus, I can feel myself not wanting to try. The pull is so forceful I don’t know if I can resist it. I’m too weak. Where I’m weak You are strong. Do for me what I don’t want to do and what I can’t do. Make me the person I’m supposed to be. I need Your power to get me through this. I’ll do what You lead. Amen.” If you don’t trust yourself to pray when you’re in a bad place, write out a prayer to have at the ready.
• Resist. When you’re depressed, your mind is not thinking right. You get stuck on thoughts that seem legitimate though they continue making you feel bad. This is the time to tell the God of the angel armies you want His perspective and want to do whatever He asks of you. And you need those who love you to pray this for you. Such allegiance to the Lord lets the Enemy know you don’t plan to cooperate with him (Jas. 4:7). This is a way to tell the devil to leave you and take his darkness with him! Allow your accountability team to speak these truth over you and with you.

Resist Escapism and Choose Presence

• Change Your Habits. The natural thing to do when you feel depressed is to try to escape it. Before you know it, you end up developing bad habits that you return to every time you’re dealing with hard emotions. It’s harder to try new and better habits when you’re depressed, but making the hard choice of using your preplanned routine for times of depression will produce wellness and joy, grow your relationship with God, protect your relationships with those close to you, and will increase your emotional intelligence (click here for my article on emotional intelligence).
• Notice His Presence. Escaping how you feel only prolongs your feelings, causes you to avoid facing what you’re going through, and distracts you from His presence. Be present with Him so He can comfort and guide you. Gaining Him is the best recovery you could ever have. “Lord, what are You teaching me through this? and “how can I bring You glory through this?” are the two best questions you can ask of Him. For more about the immense value of His presence, click here for my book review on The Promise is His Presence by Glenna Marshall.
• Be Truth-Led, Not Feelings-Led. Speak God’s truths and promises to yourself and soak in them until they realign you. Write them out to help you focus. Look at the list of God’s promises and comforts you made in your depression plan and fill your mind with these facts. Again, this is the last thing you’ll feel like doing, but it’s the very thing you need most.
• Get Moving. It might seem absolutely impossible to leave your bed or sofa, take a shower, answer a text, turn on your favorite worship song, or do the next thing, as Elisabeth Elliot is famous for saying. But you want to make yourself move and allow others to move you. There will be times to move forward one small step at a time. Maybe you simply move your favorite chair outside under the sun with your Bible. Or maybe moving will include spending time with someone who makes you laugh, engaging with something creative, playing sports, or taking a prayer walk in the rain. Just put it in your plan so everyone can help you remember to do it when you need to.
• Be Present. Depression wants you to isolate. Tell your loved ones to protect you from it. Stay in the moment with yourself and with others. If you need introverted time, make it count and limit how long you’re alone. Depression may signal the need to process some emotions, find some stillness, memorize and meditate upon Scripture, eat differently, rest afresh, intercede for your family, confess times of selfishness, spend more time worshiping outdoors, make amends, etc. If you feel lonesome, make plans with godly influences even if you don’t think you have any energy. Resisting depression and remaining engaged with people is powerful for helping you preserve your relationships, make memories, avoid the aftermath of having shame, and climb out of your current misery. (Click here for my article that provides ideas for taking breaks from technology in order to also be more present.)

Meditate on the Details of Jesus and the Larger Story

• Don’t Reject Him. In Jesus we do not have a distant God. He came to earth and suffered among the people. He continues to feel what we feel – not our supposed strengths, but our weakest moments (Mt. 25:35-36). Let Him in.
• Be Loyal to Him. He outlasted suffering, and in Him so will we. No matter how low we go, grace goes deeper still. Our future home with Him is filled with His grace. We don’t have to wait for eternity to get to know Him; rather, in depression there is an opportunity to know Him in a new and meaningful way.
• Let Him Change You. A Christian’s experiences with sorrows over the course of a lifetime can be an opportunity to mature, increase intimacy with the Lord, become more compassionate toward fellow mourners, grow in honesty and vulnerability, soften our interactions with others, lament with purpose and eternal perspective, practice cultivating hope in Him, and look more like Christ.

Resources

There’s a lot of literature available on the topic of depression, and some of it overlaps. This article drew on just a few resources in particular:

1. Depression: The Sun Always Rises (The Gospel for Real Life series) by Margaret Ashmore. This short book starts off a little abruptly, but her lack of wordiness is efficient, and her advice comes from personal experience. It works.
2. “Speak The Truth Podcast” Episode 88, May 2, 2021. This interview with Margaret Ashmore (author of the book listed above) is outstanding and highly recommended for anyone who wants to be emotionally intelligent and closer to the Lord.
3. Spurgeon’s Sorrows: Realistic Hope for those who Suffer From Depression by Zack Eswine offers a very deep understanding of what depression feels like, acknowledges what isn’t helpful, and disciples you through a maturation process for managing it.

Prayer & Blessing

“He … heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps. He has put a new song in my mouth – praise to our God. Many will see it … and trust in the Lord.” (Ps. 40:1-3)